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MacOS / OSX OS/Software Technology

OSX: Setting a global shortcut key to open a new Finder window

Given that the Finder is central to many tasks in Mac OS X, I’m surprised that there is no global keyboard shortcut to call up a new Finder window. Well, that’s not strictly true — there’s alt-cmd-space, which will bring up a new window to start a Spotlight search. But most of the time I want to open my home directory, so I’d rather have a shortcut which jumps straight there.

Googling for the answer to this problem turned up lots of out-of-date suggestions to use Clearsilver and the like, but it seemed to me that a solution could be found using only what OSX provides. And indeed it can. The following has only been tested in 10.6 Snow Leopard.